Photos

20 Amazing Facts About African Americans

Did you know Will Smith turned down a spot at MIT to pursue his music career?

Thanks to Beyonce and Destiny's Child, The Oxford English Dictionary added "bootylicious" (definition: "Especially of a woman, often with reference to the buttocks: sexually attractive, sexy, shapely") to the dictionary.

Photo: Getty Images

Ella Fitzgerald recorded over 200 albums and around 2,000 songs in her lifetime, singing the works of some of the most popular composers such as Cole Porter, Gershwin and Irving Berlin.

Morgan Freeman worked as a mechanic in the US Air Force. He also speaks fluent French.

Photo: Getty Images

Michael Jackson's video for "Billie Jean" was the first ever by a black artist to air on MTV.

Photo: Getty Images

Will Smith turned down a spot at MIT to pursue his music career. He also speaks fluent Spanish.

Photo: Getty Images

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968) was stabbed by an AfricanâAmerican woman in 1958 while attending his book signing at Blumsteinâs department store in Harlem. The next year, he and his wife Coretta Scott King visited India to study Ghandiâs nonviolence philosophy.

Photo: Getty Images

Muhammad Ali, the selfâproclaimed "greatest [boxer] of all time" was named after his father, who was named after the 19th century abolitionist and politician Cassius Marcellus Clay.

Photo: Getty Images

Jay Z earned his 11th No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 with The Blueprint 3. This allowed him to beat out Elvis, for the record of most number one albums by a solo artist.

Photo: Getty Images

Oprah was voted Most Popular at East Nashville High School. Another interesting fact? Her original birth certificate lists her name as Orpah, but when people had trouble pronouncing it, she changed it to Oprah. She became the first African-American woman billionaire in the United States in 2003.

Photo: Getty Images

Halle Berry first came into the spotlight at 17 years old when she won the Miss Teen All-American Pageant, representing the state of Ohio in 1985 and, a year later in 1986, when she was the first runner-up in the Miss USA Pageant.

Photo: Getty Images

Some fun facts about Obama: He's read every Harry Potter book, can bench-press an impressive 200 lbs, and collects Spider-man and Conan the Barbarian comics.

Photo: Getty Images

Billie Holiday performer in her own Broadway show, called "Holiday on Broadway" in 1948.